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Aug 31 2021

# London Grip New Poetry – Autumn 2021

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The Autumn 2021 issue of London Grip New Poetry features:

*Jim C Wilson *P W Bridgman * Sue Wallace-Shaddad *Kurt Luchs
*Phil Dunkerley *Kevin Cahill *Mark Mansfield *Martin Bennett
*Tim Kiely * Owen Gallagher * Sally Michaelson *Kathy Pimlott
*Barry Smith *Gillie Robic * Jackson *Flourish Joshua
*Robert Beveridge *Loukia Borrell *Robert Etty * Anthony Wilson
*Wendy Klein *Hibah Shabkhez *Julia Duke *James Piatt
* Chris Armstrong *Rosemary Norman *Kate Noakes *Ross Wilson
*Briege Duffaud *Hilary Hares *D A Prince *Jane Simpson
*Mark Young *Elizabeth Smither

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors.
Biographical notes on contributors can be found here

London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December

A printer-friendly version of this issue can be found at
LG New Poetry Autumn 2021

SUBMISSIONS: please send up to THREE poems plus a brief bio to poetry@londongrip.co.uk
Poems should be in a SINGLE Word attachment or else included in the message body
Submission windows are: December-January, March-April, June-July & September-October

Editor’s notes

There is a lot of water running through this issue. Even though we start with a nice glass of red wine provided by Jim C Wilson, the supply soon dries up for P W Bridgman’s protagonist. By about half way through this selection the rain has started for Jackson and Flourish Joshua only to become “incessant” for Anthony Wilson and “biblical” for Wendy Klein. Ultimately of course floods are unavoidable – as in our header picture which accompanies Rosemary Norman’s poem about a waterlogged Paris in 1910.

It has become one of our distinguishing editorial aims to make LGNP contributions talk to one another in the same way that they might do in a single author collection. In this issue, besides the running water theme, we have poem groups that riff on popular music, meditate on motor cars and look askance at the work of other poets. We hope readers will spot other, subtler, hooks which link the poems together.

We rather missed a trick when we published our summer issue because we failed even to mention – let alone celebrate – the fact that it marked ten full years of London Grip New Poetry in its present form (although we had already been featuring poetry ever since the magazine was founded in 2007). We thank all contributors and readers for sustaining their interest and support. The present editor makes no rash promises about doing another ten years! But our immediate intention is to soldier on…

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
Forward to first poet

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    Jim C Wilson: Claret

    A deep red secret
    in dark green glass.
    Cork sliding out.
    The liquid waits;
    it breathes.
    Time to savour
    then trickle and flow.
    A drip like blood
     runs down the label.
    Tip of tongue touching;
     mouth filling.
    French earth, French sun;
    the round red taste of years.
    Hot vineyards stretch
    through this grey night
    of drizzle. And I have
    four more glasses to travel,
    four more glasses of revelation.

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***

    P W Bridgman: Badly Burned Mathematician Declines Prestigious Fermat Prize

    There were merciless vicissitudes
    & no wine in his cup. There were flies.
    There were 18th C. prints of modest women bathing under cloudless skies.
    There were sharp left turns, & abrupt right ones, in his moods.
    There were unfilled prescriptions & hieroglyphic notes in his wallet
    & a card with the number for the mental health clinic. (If only he’d call it.)

    There were handwritten villanelles in his desk drawer,
    yellowing dissertation chapter drafts & a commendation from the dean.
    There were scattered proofs & calculations, a half-written cinquain.
    There was no wine in his cup. There was a locked door.
    There was romance trapped inside him, Wordsworthian & pure.
    There was nowhere, beyond his verse, that he could channel it. There

    was somewhere, someone—illumin’d under cloudless skies—
    who would see past his disfigured face & hands, the clutter, the flies
    & the pizza boxes. Someone who’d recognize that his love for caesurae,
         rational numbers & Schrödinger his cat
    could never fill his cup. Meanwhile, simultaneously alive and dead,
         he thought—perhaps irrationally?—sod the bloody Fermat.

                             The first line and rhyme scheme owe a debt of inspiration to Sean O’Brien’s “There Were”.

                             That poem appeared in the Autumn 2017 issue of Poetry Salzburg Review at page 8.

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    Sue Wallace-Shaddad: In the Zone

    Gloria likes to dress in flounces
    posing as if floozy is her middle name.
    She conducts each workshop with flair,
    frightens others with her shade of hair,
    preening its purple with yellow tints,
    embrace inspiration, her bywords.

    Daphne tends to cower, cringe in the corner.
    Easily overlooked, she avoids
    eye contact, hopes to be forgotten,
    hides when they read round the circle.
    Her poetry is thoughtful, seems
    to indicate subterranean depths.

    Vincent always volunteers views, voice
    dominant — his shouting makes others wince.
    He has a high opinion of himself
    as consummate master of rhyme and metre,
    so brandishes yet another sonnet
    to declaim before long-suffering peers.

    Carlita is rather clever. Coño! she swears,
    her Cuban heritage colouring her speech.
    She may even offer to dance salsa
    after knocking back her favourite mojitos —
    it will take a trip to the bar
    to bring on a final creative boost.

    Vincent fancies Gloria, may make a move,
    unaware Gloria harbours designs
    on Daphne, her quiet demeanour
    a perfect foil, spur to her flamboyance.
    Carlita finds the whole group a scream,
    determines never to meet them again.

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***

    Kurt Luchs: Another Minor Poet
    after “A Minor Poet” by Jorge Luis Borges

    The song I hope to sing is one
    where the words march into the whiteness of the page
    like Captain Robert Falcon Scott trudging toward the South Pole,
    fated to arrive five weeks after Amundsen,
    that damned Norwegian upstart, and even worse,
    doomed to die on the return journey,
    braving the vast Antarctic icebox again at forty below.

    There is no shame in being the second man
    to reach the Pole or walk on the Moon (who was that again?),
    no dishonor in being the first forgotten,
    snow-blind, descending into darkness by means of the light.
    The sweet amnesia of snow and cold is no less merciful
    than that of the poem never written, never published,
    or perhaps, published and quickly lost among so many others.
    Though we appear to be hurtling away from each other
    we are all on the same journey,
    unknowingly following imaginary, invisible longitudinal lines
    that must meet in the long night at the wrong end of Earth.

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    Phil Dunkerley: Burning at Both Ends
    After C. P. Cavafy (1863 - 1933) — ‘Candles’

    Only the now moment is real,
    the one here, bright morning sun
    in this quiet, familiar room,
    these words I realise. The rest
    is fuzzed by memory or hope
    - the photo I took of us yesterday
    among the colours of autumn,
    or my diary showing that someone
    expects to see me this afternoon.

    Cavafy said the future is a row
    of bright-burning candles, the past
    a gloomy line of cold wax, gone.
    I don’t see it that way. I’d say
    the future is less certain and
    the past not dead - some of it
    survives inside my head.
    For me life is more a film, a movie,
    and the current frame is now.

    Oh, at some point, my film will flap
    and run off the reel. Someone
    will have to come to sort it out,
    put it back in the can. That’s fine.
    After all, I don’t know how it began,
    and remember so little of the time
    when I was young. The now frame
    comes and goes. For how long?
    Ah, no-one ever knows.

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***

    Kevin Cahill: The Doctrine of the Trinity

    If God was Maud Gonne,
    and I was Willie,

    I would flirt with Her
    in the rotund phaeton

    of a Lanchester 38.
    Rock back and forth

    in the green mackerel-falls
    of our libidoes. That is,

    until she’d bury her head
    in the black-winged, haughty

    headgear of her chutzpah,
    and run to the Continent.

    Then I would grow young enough
    to stagger into the fog

    of a second childhood:
    ripping the fabric of my jeans

    at the knees, professing my love
    for Her daughter,

    and should she too say No
    then there would always be George:

    her non-divine, earthy chemise
    effacing You with steam.

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***

    Mark Mansfield: “Stay”

    The lighthouse beacon sweeps out past the rocks
    and ragged coastline thick with fog and mist.
    From where the dunes slant down, a shape appears
    in a beeline to where our cottage was.

    I cut my engine, switching off my beams.
    In the moonlight, I see who’s drawing near:
    those bangs tossed back in rhythm as she hits
    that loping stride with hands tucked in her jeans.

    As the surf recedes, I hear her singing, softly
    lilting “Oh, won’t you stay?” the way she did.
    I glimpse myself just waiting on the pier.
    The breakers crash, then hush—and both are gone.

    Mark Mansfield: The Box

    December 19th, 1948:
    “I’ll Dance at Your Wedding” lingered on the dial.
    Climbed to number two on Your Hit Parade.
    Elegance was not yet out of style.

    Selling the house, I came across a box
    from your wedding stacked among the attic dreck.
    Those pillbox hats and bumper bangs!—poor fox,
    glass eyes staring from someone’s pearl-drenched neck.

    Through a broken window, suddenly a crow
    flew, perching on your box as though its due.
    From its black shape, an old flame’s voice arose:
    listen—and then like mist, “I do.”  “I do.”

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***

    Martin Bennett: Ella In Lockdown, Rome, 2021

    ‘Flyin Home’: If only…Concatenation
    of Johnson’s Brexit plus Covid-19,
    that double whammy, borders have been blocked.
    Up inside seventh-floor Roman attic
    this remoaner remains, locked down; between
    Ciampino and Gatwick former freedom
    of movement is invalid, ‘Yes, we can’
    substituted by a further ‘Thou Shalt Not.’

    Except now and then joy turns absolute.
    In defiance of all things static,
    Lionel Hampton via vibraphone
    beats recent decrees into a cocked hat;
    Ella merges standard lyric with scat –
    space and time, like words, gracefully elastic.

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***

    Tim Kiely: Pantoum for Eartha Kitt and Nat ‘King’ Cole in St. Louis Blues

    You know that it was never sung like this.
    You know the movies tell it wrong, but still,
    a lie this skillful casts a kind of bliss,
    like every fine idea. You know it will.

    You know the movies tell it wrong, but still
    you want a world where voices harmonise
    like every fine idea. You know it will
    get torn to scraps outside, hearing no sighs.

    You want a world where voices harmonise.
    This isn’t it. You see the love on show
    get torn to scraps outside, hearing no sighs,
    and so, you sing it softly. Even though

    this isn’t it, you see the love on show.
    A lie this skillful casts a kind of bliss.
    And so, you sing it softly, even though
    you know that it was never sung like this.

    Tim Keily: Self Portrait as Superhero

    It starts with the mask – knowing how it feels
    as it catches your breath in hot clouds
    around your mouth. The first thing to make sure of
    is that it sits well. You don’t want to be
    mistaken for a cyclist, or an EDL guy.

    Those bars of red in the home-stitched cloth
    need to set off the resolve in your eyes
    just right. When the morning train pulls in
    what looks back out from the windows
    is a panel from your old ‘KarmaZero’ comics.

    Or even more than that. This is less
    imitation than secret identity.
    This costume is now a news dispatch
    from Earth 7B. That moment, you feel
    a new flowering in the hands

    that were fumbling the ties behind your ears
    just moments before. Your muscles tease
    with the shivers of what could be released
    if you leapt the turnstile. Your jacket stirs
    in the wind from the platform. Like a cape.

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***

    Owen Gallagher: Boy in a Cape

    You have to imagine the boss in the workplace,
    the way he talks and wags his finger
    at this worker who daren’t speak back.

    You have to imagine this worker at home
    the way he talks and wags his finger
    at his son whose bottom-lip trembles.

    Then imagine the boy crying as his mum
    tells him a story of a bad man at his daddy’s
    workplace and how the next morning

    the boy, without breakfast,
    slips into his Superboy clothes
    and tails his dad to his workplace,

    stands in front of the boss, mouth set,
    hands on hips, fists of steel.

    Owen Gallagher: God’s Own

    A scene from a cowboy film:
    a drifter staggers from the bar to the dance floor,
    taps on a shoulder, one insult lassoes another,
    a head-butt, a knee-jerk; handbags, stilettos,
    tables and chairs used as never before.

    The bar’s shutter drops its eyelid.
    The cashier’s door clicks like a purse.
    The bouncers wade in, going at it
    as if they were on piece-rate.

    Scores are stretchered off
    whilst the band plays, ‘When Irish Eyes
    are Smiling’ and some, like us, linger,
    desperate for a lumber, a snog in a close.
    Most stagger out. They wake to
    ‘How wis yir nicht’? ‘Ach, it wis awe richt.’

    And there was my brother, the bouncer,
    a legend, who almost single-handedly
    cleared the floor and could have put
    both Tyson and Ali on the ropes.

    When he’s on his knees at home,
    praying with us, his knuckles white
    to the bone, I wonder if he’s at a ringside,
    calling God out for a round on their own.

    Owen Gallagher: She is in my Thoughts and Hands

    As the hooter blew and the women took their break,
    she stayed behind to help me catch up,
    fill crates for the lorries to deliver –
    Irn Bru, Scotland’s other national drink.

    I could hardly see her hands move
    as she plucked the bottles from the conveyor belt,
    and filled the wooden crates
    while humming ‘Lovely Leitrim’.

    After her funeral as the mourners were served soup
    by the women in our family, I stepped in to help,
    recalling her hands, how she’d stepped in
    for me, and shaped my world.

    Mother and son. Even in death we are not parted.
    Our thoughts and hands are ladles for love.

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    Sally Michaelson: Working Women

    Women with elbows grazed
    from leaning on sills

    envy their daughters
    catching the first El

    to rows of Singers
    in light- filled hangars

    where wages are docked
    if they look at the clock–

    they race head to head
    until the foreman calls time,

    after a pickle, a pie
    they dance the Lindy Hop

    or tell saucy jokes
    until they cry laughing,

    punctuate the afternoon
    with love songs in languages

    until Angelina’s high treble
    strikes the top of the hour

    a Sicilian bride is jilted
    and the work day ended.

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    Kathy Pimlott: Return to the Terminus

    Too often now I sway into the night,
    that cosy winter dark between tea and
    the turning out of pubs and cinemas,
    a late traveller fogging a rattling bus.
    See me on the upper deck with the dogs
    and other coughers, taken up with smoking
    in that sophisticated way, dragon-nostrils.

    I shouldn’t keep going back, am already yellow
    beyond scrubbing. These comfortable excursions
    just won’t do while all the while life howls
    for attention. Last year a clever man I knew
    a bit, courted a death he didn’t believe in.
    Visiting, face it, out of a desire to be blessed,
    by happenstance, I was invited into the scan,

    into the intimacy of his scarred insides,
    to witness a death sentence, 90% sure, but, ah,
    that golden 10. First question:  can I still
    have a drink? He died, swollen, in a hard clutch.
    And now this other man, mine, heads that way too.
    But anyhow, look, here comes the whipsmart clippie
    machine grazing her hip, its crank and buttons

    primed for pernickity fares. Only she commands
    the bell: one for stop, two sharp dings for go.
    If I don’t tell you, how will you ever know about
    that bronco ride of side benches, the fear of slipping
    right off the bus as the driver speeds, skips stops, reckless
    on corners, to the end of his shift? It’s late, so join me,
    grip the pole, lean out into those bright, melancholy lights.

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***

    Barry Smith: Broken Glass
    Kristallnacht, Berlin, 9-10th November, 1938.

    Perhaps they do not smile, these passers-by
    on their morning stroll down Friedrichstrasse,
    the smartly-dressed couple, hatted, gloved,
    he in semi-shaded profile gazing
    on his companion’s illuminated cheek,
    her hand raised, making some observation
    about the weather or the business of the day,
    unaware of the shattered store windows.

    Slivered reflections               cobwebbed
              jagged-edged       fractured
    image         sharded          peephole
         silvered         shiny  icicled
                 rippling               circling
         light     stuttering     like
            meshed wire     triangulated
          heaped           broken              glass

    Perhaps they do not smile, these passers-by
    on their morning stroll down Friedrichstrasse,
    the executive in snap-brimmed homburg,
    knotted-tweed overcoat and gleaming brogues,
    looking straight ahead, bisecting the crowd
    of cloth-capped workmen, pebbles on the shore,
    briefcase swinging, a pendulum at his side,
    indifferent to the crunching glass underfoot.

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    Gillie Robic: leatherjackets

    she hurries home along the night park
    disturbed by indefinable sounds
    the creaks
    the whisperings

    she knows them by the pricking of her thumbs

    		the other side of the road they emerge
    		from the shadow of the abandoned
    		gasometer     grinning 	   sucking
    		testosterone off each other
    		mouthing the usual commentaries
    		on bodies and intentions

    	they come across      all swagger and jerkin

    	she keeps walking    they thrust and canter
    	catch her up surround her
          		start the laying on of hands

    her eyes spin from hazel to witchery
    a bubble of rage forms in her gut
    e   x   p   a   n   d   s
    to her subcutaneous edge

    she runs – leaps – soars into the sky – looks down
    on the stunned faces watching her departure
    as they recede her body fills with laughter

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    Jackson: In Shanghai
    February 2019

    Outside my hotel,
    around the corner from the neon mirage
    of the central shopping street,
    a woman squats in the roadway,
    a metre from the gutter
    in the cold rain,
    pants down
    by her bag-lady bag
    Behind her a spray
    of ochre diarrhoea
    bleeds across wet black tarmac
    She tries to wipe,
    adding bits of tissue to the filth
    Her spread broad arse
    is a rash of red sores
    I can’t
    help her

    My own gut is unsettled
    from random travel food
    My socks are soaked, my feet chilled
    It’s my first night in Shanghai
    whose name means “On Sea”

    It’s all one, tonight,
    the neon, the concrete, the rain, my
    Subway dinner, bun, salad, luck, fate, can’t
    find what I want
    tonight

    I nod to the front desk’s tawdry gloss,
    punch the single lift to 6,
    navigate passages smelling of yesterday’s noodles,
    return to my cramped room

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    Flourish Joshua: Peugeot 504

    this traffic slanders my jaded spine
    as i edit this poem in this Peugeot 504.

    i smell the arrival of rain sifting through
    this dusty pane beside me, too.

    i pick up my phone again, but this
    woman beside me,

    juddering crying babies with a
    running nose, steals a golden line

    off my brain: *oga, abeg, help me
    hol this pikin. oh, a new yorker-worthy

    line, flushed off my head like
    aborted fetus. noise. breeze. driver.

    the smell of naira. whisky smell of
    these passengers—who may or may

    not be missing a bath. deafening lorry
    honks. smell of fuel. scorching road

    asphalt. fela’s zombie. these distractions
    are peeling off so many lines i’m trying

    to build.  lines worthy of the nobel prize.
    i am amidst sad people, bookmarking

    me like a favorite tab. strange how these
    distractions [stealing my lines],
    completes this poem.

     *Nigerian pidgin.

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    Robert Beveridge: Divine Mercy
    “There's a second when both are red, but never when both are green.”—Chris Stroffolino

    Can you handle it is what
    I ask you. Can you get
    in behind the wheel of a two-
    door 1974 Gremlin and just
    take off for as long as a full
    tank of gas will get you
    with nothing but the clothes
    on your back and whatever
    change lies among the discarded
    fast-food wrappers on the passenger-
    side floor? Can you do that?
    That's what I want to know.
    Or will you instead pull over
    when the needle hits the post
    beside the E? What then?
    Would it be easier to just get out
    and walk, or perhaps hitch
    a ride, leave the keys
    in the ignition so some other
    poor bastard can get the last
    twenty miles out of it, pick up
    the two quarters you missed
    under the backseat mats?
    That's all.

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***

    Loukia Borrell: New Dirt

    They show up in their Sunday best.
    Flowing skirts, pressed chinos
    Hair combed back, ties straight.
    Father’s Day at the cemetery
    and the children of dead men are here,
    forming semi-circles and linking
    arms, bowing heads and pointing
    to the yellow blooms on day lilies.
    He’d love them, they whisper.
    But they don’t cry and they
    don’t stick around. Too hot.

    Oh, they see you. Feel sorry for
    you, too, as they head on home.
    A sideways glance your way and
    knowing smiles. He’s new here.
    Poor guy, musta just lost his dad,
    just days or weeks, ya think? Yeah,
    by the looks of the grave. New dirt.

    I’ve slowed down from tending a
    grave near him. He is on his knees
    smoothing out the dirt clods
    with his palms. He’s empty
    inside and out. Doesn’t even have
    a headstone or a blade of grass
    growing through the earth.
    “This just happened?” I ask. “Yes,
    my son.”  You gulp down your pain,
    trying to bury it, like you did him,
    before dropping your body and soul
    into a chair so low, I tell myself it will
    be a miracle if you ever get back up.

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***

    Robert Etty: Since April

    Sue felt off-colour in Lanzarote,
    but most things are off-colour here, she smiled.
    After the holiday nothing changed,
    and, to cut a short story shorter still,
    appointments were made and decisions taken.

    Hospital was miles from home, between the edge
    of a northern city and bluebell woods in leaf.
    ‘How convenient,’ her husband said, pointing,
    trying to make light of something that wasn’t.
    ‘I bet you’ll sneak out and start coppicing.’

    She’d been a woman of silent opinions,
    a watcher from the side, and the funeral
    was a quiet occasion: family and neighbours,
    a few survivors from where she’d worked,
    some wildlife group volunteers. Elgar, turned low.

    The celebrant spoke as if he’d known her,
    sunshine burned through a stained-glass window,
    an elderly man had to step outside,
    and her grandson (12 yesterday) stole the show
    by praising her rhubarb and raspberry pie.

    The funeral card contained Sue’s last message,
    saying she hoped she would leave no mark
    except memories for those she’d shared love with.
    And none of the cards had been left anywhere
    when the cleaner hoovered round afterwards.

    Robert Etty: Two Cuckoos Fly Over The Local Co-Op

    The second flies westerly after the first
    above the neotraditional tower
    in level flight at a moderate speed
    at ten past nine in a pure blue sky.

    The car park’s only a quarter full,
    with no cars moving in these few moments,
    which means the cuckoo’s call in the quiet
    sounds almost and briefly like the voice

    of a vigilant toddler fluting Co-op,
    Co-op, Co-op, Co-op, as if
    to remind distracted shoppers
    that force of habit has sat-navved them here.

    And in each bird-breath it becomes Cuc-koo,
    confirmed (and confounding expectations)
    by seeing that the cuckoos aren’t doves or pigeons
    or hawks on fledgling-reconnaissance flights,

    but they might have been, in how one bird
    can resemble another, and supermarkets
    are much alike, except for own brands
    and store signs the regulars don’t raise their eyes to.

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    Anthony Wilson: Now and Not Yet

    We are in Tesco in Yeovil
    waiting for a funeral.

    These dried pink and rubber things
    are scrambled eggs, salmon and a bagel.

    In Cascais our taxi driver
    described Paula Rego as a very strange woman.

    The gallery
    was the best coffee of the trip.

    When I told you I did not care
    you hated my music

    I lied. I’ve been doing it
    my whole life.

    From Christmas madness
    to one violin

    in an empty kitchen
    we go on crying

    because we go on
    loving you.

    Anthony Wilson: Found: Rain

    Part of the rain has now fallen,
            the rest now to fall.

                  You can fall a long way in sunlight.
                          You can fall a long way in the rain.

    Praise the rain
                                                      it brings more rain.

                  I saw, for the first time, Walter Scott
                          speaking of the incessant rain.

    The rain is speaking quietly,
    	 you can sleep now.

    Praise the rain
                                                     it brings more rain.

                  I drove home seen-through
                          by the glitter of the summer day

                                  by rain and quietness
                          seen-through by the moon.

    It has rained.

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    Wendy Klein: 21st Century Lament

    The absence of the pole star
    The absence of biblical rain
                            of some kind of ark
                                    the right patriarch to steer it:
                                             a diligent itemiser
            prepared to collect specimens two by two,
            who will not fail to remember the unicorn,
            will navigate without instruments.

    The absence of the phone box with broken glass
    A splash of piss eating away at the print
                            of a racing form,
                            some punter’s dropped in the corner

    The absence of the cyclist, run down by a woman
    	texting on her mobile phone

    The absence of voices rattling on and on about something
    	mistakenly called compassion
    		to ears that have shut down,

    The absence of the unicorn (again) and the virgin
    and the golden chain she used to keep him nestled close
    	and of virginity itself,
    		becoming an anachronism
    			like unicorns,
                                    like astronomers
    				and maybe even the stars themselves –
    how easy it is to forget them –
    	pinpoints of white
    	on a worn velvet backdrop.

    The absence of the need to remember
    				of memory,
    The silence of absence;
    the absence of absence
    	the void.

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    Hibah Shabkhez: Jeopardy

       Inside,
    With a flick of my wrist
    With one precise yet careless twist
    I set water coursing through steel
    Pipes, make it come running
    Up to do my bidding;
      And I forget
    That I need it to live.

       Outside,
    The sluggish river smiles,
    And plots its cold revenge.

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    Julia Duke: Reflections on Weather Dependency

                     I
    As rain clouds gather,
    sunlight glints on the water
    under inky skies.
    Threatening to rain,
    the dark clouds vacillate like
    weak-willed parents.
    A wild day today,
    wind whipping the trees, rain drops
    spattering the glass.

                     II
    Droplets of water
    tremble on fine cobweb threads,
    shining in the gloom.
    Dry and pale, parched soil
    yearns for daily watering,
    to make flowers thrive.
    A single raindrop
    glistens on a lupin leaf
    like a shining pearl.

                    III
    Rain falls steadily,
    darkening the soil, dripping
    from glossy, wet leaves.
    Fresh from my shower,
    I see the dripping trees and
    share their joy, renewed.
    Small, muddy puddles
    are morphed into mirrors of
    summer’s bright sunshine.

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    James Piatt: Neglected Things

    An old rutted road filled with puddles and
    memories from the recent rains, crosses a
    meadow where an abandoned Ford truck
    can be seen in the middle among tall
    weeds. It no longer is able to run, tires
    gone, body and engine oxidized, windows
    broken, upholstery ripped to shreds, by
    time, animals, and seasons. It is a
    nostalgic fading piece of seasons passed.
    I don’t think anyone ever bothered to see
    why it had stopped, or corroded into a
    pale rust patina of neglect, it reminded me
    of the poor old homeless man that died in
    among the bins and debris in that alley
    a long time ago, I don’t think anyone
    bothered to see why he died either.

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    Chris Armstrong: Innocence

    The London mist wets the docks and the decks
    of my first ship on the day that I join;
    I am alone at the rail: there are barges, a tug

    of loneliness in my chest. This sea,
    the sea in the docks, is dirty brown
    rainbow oily, scummed with ship droppings,

    a lone plank of timber floating like a lost
    surfboard - I think of the sun on Gower waves.
    I left home young and immediately

    uncompanioned by strangers,  was lost
    to all they knew, drowning in the isolation
    of my new-learned bewilderment

    wondering if I shall ever know the pleasure
    of girls' bodies as their talk suggest they do.
    Loaded, this ship is as empty as my soul

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    Rosemary Norman: 1910

    As the steps up from Paris pavements
    to doorways grew fewer

    and were submerged, and street lamps
    fell in love with their own

    ornate reflections in the rising water,
    while in the Gare D’Orsay

    the arched glass roof and chandeliers
    did likewise, citizens too –

    crowding three or four to a window
    to converse with those

    who boated along between shopfronts
    or trod wooden walkways,

    hats firmly on – knew they had never
    been more photogenic

    and were not confused by the flood’s
    beauty, which may be

    because rain that had fallen for weeks
    came up now, steadily

    from below, giving them usable time
    to see nobody drowned.

    Rosemary Norman: Dance

    Anyone who can hear, Q says, must join hands
    and dance round in a ring, impossible not to.

    Bond slips the tin whistle into an inside pocket.
    Confident as he is that the device is no more

    than fairies in disguise offer to third brothers,
    it will do to mark him out, him being no pusher

    of pens that do not double as cameras or guns.
    He never did play a note of music but the tin

    whistle promises plenty, not even the stiffest
    lips or fingers can resist it. As a gang of slick-

    suited thugs bent on ridding the world of itself
    groups for a last act, Bond has them reduced

    in minutes to puddles of unidentifiable liquid
    on the floor with his rendition of The Ashplant.

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    Kate Noakes: 'The Breathing of Statues' - Rilke
    With gratitude to Dannie Abse for the quote from Rilke,

    which he mentions in his memoir, "The Presence"

    Listen - surprising and strange is this music.

    An informer in a car park. A nuisance caller.
    Heavy and deep-throated is the song of marble.
    Unlikely under its weight, the triumphant chant
    of Samothrace echoes through a Louvre unvisited.

    Wood creaks a tune of splitting timber. A ship
    on rocks floundering. So the requiem of a reclining
    Buddha pierces a closed temple's air
    shaking the leaves of banyan and bodhi.

    And bronze birds, perched by Tracey on lintels
    and bus stops across Sydney's empty centre,
    chorus in chinks and chimes something uplifting
    and summery by a Vaughan Williams.

    Listen - surprising and strange is this breathing.

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    Ross Wilson: Admission

    Wheeled down a corridor
    with a mask over
    nose and mouth and finger
    snared by a sats probe
    and ECG leads like tentacles
    attached to sticky dots
    sending signals to a screen
    translating what’s going on
    in the body you’ve been
    driving around for fifty years
    like a car you thought had decades
    left to run. Now unsure
    you look up at what you can see
    of faces looking down through PPE
    and feel yourself whisked from
    trolley to bed on a flat board
    and are re-assured
    by the mask-muffled words
    of staff in goggles like bulging eyes.
    Giant insects work as a team,
    assembling equipment, turning
    this body that’s broken down
    with you strapped in it
    trapped behind a windscreen
    dimming like a living room light
    turning down
                                                  down
                                                                            down
    out.

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    Briege Duffaud: Coming round

    These dreams still teasing
    at the ragged fringes
    of my mind …
    Am I alive? You sure?
    How can I know?
    These dreams …
    You would lie to me,
    to lie would be your role
    in that other place,
    the place without
    certainty of flesh and blood,
    that place of terrors
    where I’ve been.
    You say I’m back but
    how can I ever now be sure?
    These dreams …
    I was immortal once,
    invincible.
    Old Pliny knew, and said
    that now the ground
    will always shake below my feet.
    Behind every bush, a shadow.

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    Hilary Hares: What the neighbours did in lockdown

    While they shack up with friends, an ill-assorted troop
    of half-hearts ambles in to fabricate a small extension.

    The house pins its hopes to a scaffold of new bones
    and lorries trundle up the Close like tumbrils.

    Within a week a pall of brick-dust overwhelms the air
    and every note the angle grinder sings begins to grate.

    Ladders lead everywhere and nowhere. Rooms sacrifice
    their walls and spill their guts into skip after skip.

    The garden sinks beneath a Jenga of mis-matched planks.
    Stagnant buckets breed a plague of tiny flies.

    When autumn settles in, a pile of sodden cardboard
    smoulders for days on a despondent bonfire.

    At night a circus of cement-mixers turns cartwheels
    in my dreams and all the disconnected drainpipes dance.

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    D A Prince: Gallery view

    We take a break, leaving on our screens
    a patchwork of emptied rooms,
    nothing and no one
    blocking bookshelves, prints or pictures, just
    lonely backdrop plants, leaves drooping.

    Distant unmuted sounds are life elsewhere
    with kettles, plumbing, argument — a door
    shut or slammed, or voices choir-ed
    like childhood rituals, the way a house
    absorbs all separate diaries into itself.

    The ghosts of rooms exhale. Where there’s been
    too much making of a living they stretch
    and claim this luxury, a snatch of white walls;
    vacant possession, giving nothing away.

    D A Prince: Let there be light

    And here it is, remaking
    drilled seedlings in techno blues and reds,
    stretching out day beyond sunset.

    Ultra-violet hisses the electric flood,
    grooming young leaves to stay up later,
    re-playing creation’s story.

    Smart language instructs the teenage crop,
    driving it to market from fields
    senseless before this new genesis;

    secret, programmed for profit.
    The new manager surveys his screen
    and sees that it is good.

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    Jane Simpson: Seams in the letter

    Like a forensic scientist
    like an amateur linguist
    like a teenager with a crush

    Like an English language teacher
    like a lexicographer
    like an expectant catechumen

    Like an expert decoder
    like a deep water diver
    like a seamstress unpicking

    I read my surgeon’s letter.

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    Mark Young: axolotl

    Even if it was as
    the specialists suggest, that
    in certain intensities of
    light the interplay
    of particular patterns
    might strobe &
    cause him to
    black out, he would rather
    pass up the surgery
    than pass up the
    opportunity to see
    the salamanders come down
    to the world's edge
    & drink up the blood
    of the setting sun.

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    Elizabeth Smither: The moon that harms animals

    It’s going to harm animals, this moon
    rising so full and huge at dusk
    over this little bald hill at the edge
    of a field of stubble. Stalks and
    black earth, already gleaned
    and dark as the darkest desire
    which will come on the animals tonight.

    And here, in proof, is the ragdoll cat
    carried draped over a child’s arm or
    worn around the neck of another, sore
    and torn, hardly bearing to be held
    because of the savage bites she bears
    for venturing, unstoppable, through the cat door
    and yielding herself, in fealty, to the moon.

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Chris Armstrong had three careers, working as a merchant seaman, a farmhand on the farm where he still lives, and as an information scientist before retiring to become a poet and writer. He has one collection of poem in print, Mostly Welsh (Y Lolfa, 2019). Although initially entirely focussed on poetry, his writing has branched into short stories and his first full length work of fiction, The Dark Trilogy will be published at the end of the year. A collection of short stories is in preparation. He has published in Storgy, Agenda and London Grip New Poetry. He lives in a cottage in the mid-Wales mountains.

Martin Bennett lives in Rome where he teaches and contributes occasional articles to ‘Wanted in Rome.’ He was 2015 Winner of the John Dryden translation prize

Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Throats to the Sky, FEED, and Sublunary Review, among others.

Loukia Borrell is the American-born daughter of Greek-Cypriot immigrants. She is a former journalist who began writing poetry in her 50s, as a way to cope with her father’s death. She has poems in West Texas Literary Review, Neuro Logical, 2 Meter Review, Dreich Magazine and elsewhere. You can find her being artfully annoying on Twitter @LoukiaBorrell

Canadian writer P.W. Bridgman’s fourth book—his second selection of poetry, entitled Idiolect—was published by Ekstasis Editions in 2021, as was his second selection of short fiction, The Four-Faced Liar. A new work, tentatively entitled Bird in the Hand, 1961: A Novella in Verse, is nearing completion. To learn more about Bridgman (a regular reviewer of poetry titles for London Grip), you may visit his website at www.pwbridgman.ca.

Kevin Cahill is a poet from Cork. His work has appeared in several publications, including Oxford Poetry, The Lonely Crowd, London Magazine, Magma, Southword, Wild Court, Dreich, and The Pre-Raphaelite Society Review

Briege Duffaud is an Irish poet and fiction writer who has contributed to several English and European magazines, most recently Acumen, The Spectator, French Literary Review, The Frogmore Papers. She lives in South-West London.

Julia Duke is a nature writer and poet whose writing is informed by her love of landscape, her fellow humans and quirky ideas. She has contributed to magazines and anthologies, including Fifth Elephant (Newtown Poets), London Grip, Indigo Dreams magazine, The Dawntreader and Suffolk Poetry Society’s magazine Twelve Rivers

Phil Dunkerley lives in South Lincolnshire where he runs the Stamford Poetry Stanza and a local U3A Poetry Group. He takes part in open mic and other sessions whenever he gets the chance. A number of his poems have sneaked in past busy editors into their magazines, webzines and anthologies – London Grip, Magma, Orbis, Poetry Salzburg Review, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and Poems for Peace, among others. He reviews for Orbis and has translated poems from both Spanish and Portuguese.

Robert Etty lives in Lincolnshire. His most recent collection, Planes Flying Over, was published by Shoestring Press in 2020.

Owen Gallagher was born of Irish parents in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. He now lives in London. His previous publications are:Sat Guru Snowman (Peterloo Poets), Tea with the Taliban (Smokestack Books), A Good Enough Love (Salmon Poetry, Ireland) which was nominated for the T.S. Eliot award and Clydebuilt. (Smokestack Books). The Sikh Snowman an illustrated children’s picture book was published in November 2020 by Culture Matters. Rabble Day, a play, will be premiered in Ireland in 2022

Hilary Hares’ poems appear widely online and in print. She has also won or been placed in a number of competitions. Her collection, A Butterfly Lands on the Moon supports Winchester Muse and a new pamphlet, Red Queen, is available from Marble Poetry. Website: www.hilaryhares.com

Jackson was born in Cumbria England and is currently based in Australia and new Zealand. Her four collections include A Coat of Ashes (Recent Work Press 2019), based on her PhD and The emptied bridge (Mulla Mulla Press). The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry includes her work. thepoetjackson.com

Flourish Joshua is a poet from Nigeria, a NaiWA poetry scholar and second runner-up of the 7th Ngozi Agbo Prize for Essay. He’s @fjspeaks on Twitter and Instagram.

Tim Kiely is a criminal barrister and poet based in London. His work has appeared in Lunar Poetry, South Bank Poetry, Under the Radar and Magma. His debut pamphlet, Hymn to the Smoke’ is published by Indigo Dreams.

Wendy Klein is a survivor of the first Oxford University (Kellogg College), undergraduate diploma in creative writing. Published widely in the US and the UK, she has 3 collections: two from Cinnamon Press and one Mood Indigo from Oversteps books, plus a selected, Out of the Blue (2019, Oversteps Books). Her pamphlet, Let Battle Commence (Dempsey & Windle 2020), based on her great-grandfather’s letters while serving as a Confederate Soldier, is also available as a film: https://youtu.be/L2JlbpAdUcU

Kurt Luchs (kurtluchs.com) has poems published or forthcoming in Antiphon, La Piccioletta Barca, and Plume Poetry Journal. He won the 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest, and has written humor for the New Yorker, the Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His books include a humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny), and a poetry chapbook, One of These Things Is Not Like the Other. His first full-length poetry collection, Falling in the Direction of Up, was recently issued by Sagging Meniscus Press. He lives in Portage, Michigan

Mark Mansfield is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Strangers Like You and Soul Barker, and one chapbook, Notes from the Isle of Exiled Imaginary Playmates. His new collection, Greygolden is scheduled for release this fall. (All collections noted are published by Chester River Press.) His poems have appeared in Anthropocene, Bayou, Fourteen Hills, The High Window, Iota, The Journal, London Grip, Magma, Obsessed with Pipework, Salt Hill Journal, Sarasvati, Staple, Star*Line, Visitant, and elsewhere. He has been a Pushcart Prize nominee. A former musician and paralegal, he currently lives in upstate New York

Sally Michaelson is a retired conference interpreter in Brussels. Her poems have been published in The High Window, The Lake, IS&T; Algebra of Owls, Squawk Back, The Bangor Literary Journal, The Seventh Quarry, Lighthouse, and Hevria. A collection The Boycott is forthcoming the The High Widow Press

Kate Noakes is a PhD student at the University of Reading researching contemporary British and American poetry. Her most recent collection is The Filthy Quiet (Parthian, 2019). She lives in London where she acts as a trustee to writer development organisation, Spread the Word.

Rosemary Norman lives in London and has worked mainly as a librarian. One poem, Lullaby, is much anthologised and her third collection, For Example, was published by Shoestring Press in 2016. Since 1995 she has collaborated with video artist Stuart Pound and their work can be seen on Vimeo

James Piatt was nominated for a Best of Web award and three times for Pushcart awards. He has had four collections of poetry, The Silent Pond,(2012), Ancient Rhythms,”(2014), Light (2016), and Solace between the Lines, (2019), over 1,530 poems, fi five novels, 7 essays, and 35 short stories, published worldwide. His fifth poetry book is scheduled for release this year. He earned his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, and his doctorate from BYU.

Kathy Pimlott is London-based, Nottingham-born. She has two pamphlets with The Emma Press, Goose Fair Night and Elastic Glue, and a first collection due in spring 2022 with Verve Poetry Press.

D A Prince lives in Leicestershire and London. Her second full-length collection (Common Ground, HappenStance, 2014) won the East Midlands Book Award 2015. A pamphlet, Bookmarks, also from HappenStance, was published in 2018.

Gillie Robic was born in India and lives in London. Her poems have appeared in the UK and the US. Her collections, Swimming Through Marble and Lightfalls, were published by Live Canon in 2016 and 2019

Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Zin Daily, Litbreak, Broadkill, Rising Phoenix, Big City Lit, Constellate, Harpy Hybrid, and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages, and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/HibahShabkhez

Jane Simpson is a poet, historian and writer of liturgy based in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her poems have most recently appeared in London Grip, Otoliths, Poetry New Zealand, takah? and Meniscus. Her collections, A world without maps (2016) and Tuning Wordsworth’s Piano (2019), were published by Interactive Press. Her latest book is The Farewelling of a Home: a liturgy. Her website is, www.poiema.co.nz

Barry Smith is the director of South Downs Poetry Festival and co-ordinator of the Chichester arts festival. Well-published in journals, his collection, Performance Rites, is forthcoming later this year with Waterloo Press. Barry is editor of Poetry & All That Jazz and works as a performance poet with jazz/roots musicians.

A new collection by Elizabeth Smither, My American chair, will be published by Auckland University Press in 2022.

Sue Wallace-Shaddad’s short collection A City Waking Up was published by Dempsey and Windle (October 2020). Shortlisted recently for the Plough Poetry Prize, she has poems published by Artemis, London Grip, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Fenland Poetry Journal and Brittle Star among others. Sue has an MA in Writing Poetry (Newcastle University/Poetry School, London). She writes poetry reviews and is Secretary of Suffolk Poetry Society. Website

Anthony Wilson’s most recent books are The Afterlife (Worple Press, 2019) and Deck Shoes, a collection of essays (Impress Books, 2019). In 2015 he published Lifesaving Poems (Bloodaxe Books), after his blog of the same name: www.anthonywilsonpoetry.com

Jim C Wilson’s writing has been widely published for 40 years. His latest poetry collection is Come Close and Listen (Greenwich Exchange). Jim lives in East Lothian. More information at www.jimcwilson.com

Ross Wilson writes “My poems have appeared in Wild Court, The Dark Horse, Edinburgh Review and various other publications. My first full collection, Line Drawing, was shortlisted for the 2019 Saltire Poetry Book of the Year. I work full-time as an Auxiliary Nurse in ICU”

Recent work by Mark Young has appeared in Marsh Hawk Review, Synchronized Chaos, & e·ratio, among other places. His most recent books are 1750 words, from SOd Press, sorties, from sandy press, & The Toast, from Luna Bisonte Prods.

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1. 2021 poetry publications – Testsitetitle
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2. 2021 publications – Jackson
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